whale carcass splattering across the beach and spectators. Thornton got the call Nov. 12, 1970, to remove a 45-foot-long sperm whale estimated to weigh 8 tons that had washed up near Florence and had started to stink; at the time, the state Highway Division had jurisdiction over beaches.

Thornton felt they couldn't haul the whale out to sea because it would wash back up. They couldn't bury it on the beach, because the waves would uncover it. And they couldn't burn it.

I don't know why they couldn't burn it. Probably because it had so much blubber it would have made an oil slick on the water and the sand. It was 8 tons, that's 16,000 pounds.